I mean, the same chances, thanks to a previous succes, of being truly expanded.

I of course love the idea of 3 Hobbit films, but I can't help but think is pretty unfair for our loved trilogy :(

It would be great if PJ takes the opportunity to add the little bits of moments he missed ten years ago, and wanted to be in the LOTR trilogy (like showing other realms from middle earth also in battle in ROTK for example) "The World is Changed, I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air"

With shorter films they can fit more showings in a day. I really wouldn't be surprised if the 3 films was really just the two cut into shorter films. Esp. if we get one during the summer. Davy Jones could've been Bilbo...I mean he was a Brit with a sense for adventure, singing & dancing. And think of the costs it would've save with forced perspective: he was ACTUALLY 5'3. He also hung out with a grumpy tall dude in a hat (Mike Nesmith.) While we're at it let's just have Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork as Merry & Pippin.

But this is only relevant if you thought the LOTR films were well-done as they were
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I, personally, don't. There were innumerable unsatisfying compressions, etc. that made the films feel less immersive than they otherwise could have been. The conversations were clipped, the narrative plotlines were painted with broad brush-strokes, the story felt rushed, and the peoples of Middle Earth got short shrift (for example, did anyone care at all about the plight of the people of Gondor?)

PJ, I imagine, sees the Hobbit as his opportunity to really flesh out a story set in Midd;e Earth, and not be forced to a compromise between nuanced narrative and action.

In that context, I am delighted that PJ will likely have at least an extra 1.5 hours to tell the story (if, indeed, we end up with three 2.5 hour films, rather than 2 three-hour films). If we can eliminate the choice between action scene and great scene of dialogue, a choice which usually favors the former, then we may all be the happier.

We shall see. There are lots of unknowns. But in general, I think more time gives PJ room to include more stuff that at least feels like Tolkien.

It's younger brother is getting as much screen time as the mammoth novel. Ah well. I do wonder if this will make LOTR seem less epic though. Davy Jones could've been Bilbo...I mean he was a Brit with a sense for adventure, singing & dancing. And think of the costs it would've save with forced perspective: he was ACTUALLY 5'3. He also hung out with a grumpy tall dude in a hat (Mike Nesmith.) While we're at it let's just have Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork as Merry & Pippin.

The way I see it, PJ has won at least the benefit of the doubt. So if he says that the story will work better if he can make 3 movies instead of 2, then he is right until proven otherwise (unless one of the complainers here is Jonathan/Chris Nolan, Joss Whedon or Aaron Sorkin or any other first class screenwriter posting under an alias).

I don't understand how people are saying now that it should be only 1 book, that's ridiculous, it shows a total lack of understanding of how a movie works.

A book can have 300 pages, it might be "lean", but it can still contain a lot of events than when put into the screen take a lot more time than an 800 pages book with multiple secondary insignificant stories and entire pages full of descriptions.

I'm not saying that 3 movies is the right way to go, I actually thought 2 was a perfect number of movies for The Hobbit. But I really don't know, I've been so wrong with movies before that if there's a director I like at the helm, I'm willing to shut my mouth and wait for the movie to be released before starting to complain about it.

And if this actually opens the door for the Hunt of Gollum, Thorongil (Viggo!!!), or even the Battle of Azanulbizar, the Death of Balin or some other significant event, it will be the best idea ever, and everybody here will agree come the summer of 2014 Please, give us back Glorfindel!!!

PJ has made tons and tons of money on his past projects and while there's something to be said for the rich wanting to get richer, I can't help but think he knows these films, along with the LOTR films, are going to be his legacy. I have faith that Peter believes he's making the right move here to tell the story(s) he wants to tell, and that the timing is right.

That having been said, I have little doubt that WB's motives revolve entirely around the almighty dollar. They have shareholders to answer to after all. "Alas for Boromir! It was too sore a trial!"

First of all, if LOTR had plenty of poems and descriptions, the Hobbit has plenty of filler as well, but they're more the kind of humoristic dialogue or Tolkien's direct comments on what's going on.

Then, LOTR had a very consistent and complex story - though many side-stories as well. 2/3 of The Hobbit is, basically, a bunch of episodes put one after the other, without much rationale and grand plan that would sustain their sequence. You could change the order of some without losing much, you could even cut half of them when sending the Company to Laketown and the story wouldn't lose any cohesion. At the end of the day, cutting any Hobbit chapter would cut a larger share of the whole book but would be less harmful to the whole than cutting most of LOTR chapters. I don't mean that stuff should be cut of course, just that any omission would be far less damaging.

So, all in all, I really don't think one could think the Hobbit deserves a ratio of screentime per word 3 times higher than LOTR. Unless we really want to have the trolls chatting for 30 minutes with PJ inventing plenty of bad puns and fart jokes :D (oh dear, and then he reads this comment and thinks to himself "That's it!" ) When we consider books that have a low words-signs / screentime ratio, we mostly deal with kids books like Dr Seuss's or Where the wild Things are - and we should keep in mind that these are vastly complemented by pictures, while we're speaking about the Hobbit, not about Father Christmas' Letters, here :)

Basically, the trick and one of issues here is that when you want to stretch things with the Hobbit, notably by giving more things to do and say to the numerous characters, it means that you have to invent it. And, frankly, the more you have to make stuff up to fill a Tolkien story, the less I expect the end result to be great. "Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time may start to think." - Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

First, just read what PJ wants to intertwine with the narrative of The Hobbit, and you'll see there's plenty of stuff for 3 movies. I'd agree with all the negative nancy's if only The Hobbit novel storyline was diluted, but IT IS NOT SO!!!

Now what is in the appendices of LotR? Backgound and character development, such as Durin's Folk (Thrain and Azanulbizar), Gandalf and Thorin's encounter in Bree, Gandalf prevailing over Saruman in the White Council about Dol Guldur, Balin visiting Bilbo, and going to Moria, Saruman searching for the Ring near the Gladden Field, Sauron escaping in Mordor.

As for the Hobbit movies, they are adaptations; they never are exactly like the books, and I think we should all keep that in mind. Also that we know next to nothing about the scripts, and how they planned everything in the first place, so everyone should calm down a bit...

...it could be that PJ decided to use a lot of "slow motion" in the first two movies that it stretched the running time enough to fill in 3 movies. LOL Remember the excessive use of slow mo in King Kong?

Even with expanded material, I really don't think the first four chapters of the Hobbit would make a good standalone film.

If they're going to do that with any portion of the story it would make more sense to do it towards the end where they can do what they did with Rohan and Helm's Deep, and have a lot of buildup to the battle while giving the characters more of a chance to develop than they did in the book in some cases. Expanding on a few misadventures and a trip to Rivendell just wouldn't have the same impact.

...it just doesn't seem like a cohesive movie. Especially considering that the first movie up until now was going to end with Barrels out of Bond. If they're going to change where the first movie ends (which sounds likely) then I think ending somewhere in Mirkwood (maybe after the spider battle or at the forest's entrance) would be the only thing that would make sense.

With what they can add in its going to make the hobbit better and make for one heck of a ride from the hobbit to the lord of the rings. This is going to be the ride of rides through middle-earth as far as movies go.

If The Hobbit is becoming Three full length films, then there will be significant pulling from Peter
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, Fran and Phillipa's collective asses, appendicies or no. You think we are going to get Three Hobbit movies and not get more Tauriel than you ever imagined? And this Business of The Dunedain trapping The Nazgul? And God knows how much other fan fic, and I would bet we STILL don't get a damned glimpse of Bombadil or Glorfindel or any other "left out" or "mostly left out" from LOTR.

At least Lucas was playing around with his own story. Love it or hate it, it was entirely his to do with as he pleased. But The Hobbit predates Jackson's birth by several decades. . . he might have legal rights to alter it, but the moral legitimacy is another matter altogether.

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Why do you guys keep mentioning Star Wars? I don't see George Lucas who's writing the script out of his ass and casting Hayden Christiansen creating Jar Jar Binks. Hobbit, regardless of everything, has amazing story and amazing cast to portray amazing characters. Some thing we must be careful and hopeful about, but come on, saying that this looks like Star Wars prequels is an insult of highest order. What next, Avatar comparison?

"Hear me, hounds of Sauron, Gandalf is here! Fly if you value your foul skins, I will shrivel you from tail to snout if you step within this circle!"

"Do not be to eager to deal out death in judgement. Even the very wise cannot see all ends."

"All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds awake to find that it was vanity; But the dreamers of day are dangerous men. That they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it possible."- T.E. Lawrence

What I am saying is that, looking at a reasonably large number of examples, that link simply isn't in evidence.

For a very simple example take a look at the HP series. Despite the longest book being around 3.5 times the length of the shortest the length of the films bear absolutely no relationship to the length of the adapted texts.

The Order of the Phoenix is 260,000 words and has a run time of 134 minutes, yet Brokeback Mountain is 138 minutes and adapted from a story with only 5,000 words it it.

LOTR's ratio of words to screen-time meanwhile is more than three times that of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

I fully understand that it is intuitive to assume the to two factors should have a direct relationship but as far as I can see they don't.

A page of text, a paragraph or a sentence do not have any associated quantum of screen time which can be defined in and of itself outside how it happens to be portrayed in anything but the most extremely broad sense, it seems to me.

Precisely! The books are the books, and the movies are the movies, period. It's the same source of stories, on different medias. If some people think that the hobbit movies will fail, or are not very good, why watching, or following everything about the movies?

To the nay-sayers: How many extra movies would it have taken to film a version of LOTR that included all the parts that got cut?

Zero, assuming that the 33% bloat of poorly-contrived, introduced material was removed. Each theatrical release should have been roughly thirty minutes shorter to include everything essential to the story.

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How many extra movies would it have taken to film a version of LOTR that included both the parts that were cut and relevant appendix material?

Zero. There is nothing essential to the narrative in the Appendices... That's why they're appendices.

PJ's filmmaking philosophy never changes. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.